WASHINGTON (CNS) — A new film on the life of St. Faustina
Kowalska, the Polish nun whose visions of Jesus led to the Divine Mercy devotion,
will have a one-night-only showing Oct. 28 on more than 700 screens across the
United States.
The 90-minute movie, “Love and Mercy: Faustina,” will also have some features about St. Faustina surrounding it, according to Marian Father Chris Alar, who is seen on-screen during the film.
Shot in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Mexico, Colombia and the
United States, “Love and Mercy: Faustina” was filmed twice, with the actors
speaking in English or Polish, said Fr. Alar in an Oct. 3 phone interview with
Catholic News Service from his native Michigan, where he was giving a retreat. “That
makes it fairly unique,” he added.
The movie was directed by Michal Kondrat, who may be familiar to some Catholics as the director of “Two Crowns,” a 2017 film biography of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.
Fr. Alar said Kondrat had read the diaries of St. Faustina
and was interested in developing a film based on the life of another Polish
saint.
Maciej Malysa and Kamila Kaminska star in a scene from the movie “Love and Mercy: Faustina.” The new film on the life of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun whose visions of Jesus led to the Divine Mercy devotion, will have a one-night-only showing Oct. 28, at about 700 screens across the United States. (CNS, courtesy of Kondrat-Media)
The filmmaker approached the Marians of the Immaculate
Conception — Poland’s first native-founded religious order for men back in 1670
— which as a congregation has a special devotion to St. Faustina. It was a
member of this order who weaved his way through Nazi- and Soviet-occupied
Eastern Europe to journey to the United States and spread the word of the nun,
for whom he had been her spiritual director.
After some initial storyboards, the Marians brought out a
documentary on St. Faustina the congregation had produced in the 1980s, “Divine
Mercy: No Escape,” to flesh out added details, Fr. Alar said.
He added news of the Divine Mercy devotion — which is simply
“love in action” — is “great and powerful and incredibly necessary,” because
St. Faustina was told by Jesus the message for the end times: “‘If you don’t
pass through the doors of my mercy, you must pass through the doors of justice.’
Very few people are aware of it. Even Catholics.”
Fr. Alar called the Divine Mercy devotion “technically, the
fastest grassroots movement in the history of the Church, and its growth has
been phenomenal.
Kamila Kaminska and Maciej Malysa star in a scene from the movie “Love and Mercy: Faustina.” The new film on the life of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun whose visions of Jesus led to the Divine Mercy devotion, will have a one-night-only showing Oct. 28, at about 700 screens across the United States. (CNS, courtesy of Kondrat-Media)
“Compared to other movements in the Church, like the Sacred
Heart, it’s incredible what has been done in such a short period of time,” he
noted. “That being said, it still is not known by many people, because many
people are not practicing their faith. If they were practicing their faith,
they’d hear about it in church.”
Fr. Alar wanted to caution potential viewers about one theme
that runs through part of “Love and Mercy: Faustina” they may find problematic:
the suicide of the painter who, at St. Faustina’s direction, painted the image
of Jesus with red and white rays emanating from his heart to represent the
blood and water that flowed from his side after being pierced in his side
during his crucifixion.
The painter, Eugene Kazimierowski, was indeed a Mason, as
the film noted, “but he converted” before being called upon to paint the Divine
Mercy image, Fr. Alar told CNS. It is also true that he painted himself as
Judas, but “ not because he was siding with Judas and wanting to betray Christ,
but because he was a sinner and wanted to repent of his sins.”
As for the suicide, “what isn’t said in the movie, not out
of despair or lack of trust in God’s mercy (did he kill himself). The Nazis
were coming, and he was for sure in an area that the Nazis were occupying and
he would have been taken prisoner,” Fr. Alar said. “And he had information
about different things that the Nazis knew he knew. He knew for sure he would
have been taken, detained and tortured. It’s never a good decision to take your
life, but one that he did fully and freely of his own free will.”
— By Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service.
‘Love and Mercy: Faustina’
Kamila Kaminska stars in a scene from the movie “Love and Mercy: Faustina.” The new film on the life of St. Faustina Kowalska, the Polish nun whose visions of Jesus led to the Divine Mercy devotion, will have a one-night-only showing Oct. 28, at about 700 screens across the United States. (CNS, courtesy of Kondrat-Media)
One-night-only showing, 7 p.m., Monday, Oct. 28
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